somewhat sille, that's me!

i would text my parents in Chinese sometimes, using whatever limited characters i could recognise. and i think my mom kinda overestimated my ability to read Chinese.. cos i woke up at 6.30 this morning to her SMS which, among others, contained these characters:

孩子们,妈妈打胜病魔..你们回家后可以好好为我......精力.. and 4 last characters which read like a CNY greeting like 恭喜发财 or something like that (it wasn't la, but i don't know what it meant. the pinyin goes stg like 'yuan man ji chang'{?})

in my groggy state, i could only recognise 孩子们 (dear children), 打 (hit), 魔 (demon), and 你们回家后可以好好为我 (when you reach home, you must do [something] for me).. 精 (spirit?)..

this obviously freaked me out because she was still in the hospital.. what's this about hitting demons?? and do what when we go home?? you can imagine what went thru my mind. i dialled her number immediately.

me: what happened, ma? what is your SMS saying??

mom: you ah.. sometimes when i call you, the phone will ring off the hook and you wouldn't pick up. what are you doing up so early?

me: yaaa.. i gotta get to work, ma. so what's going on??

mom: no la. i just said that i [reads out SMS to me]. you understand?

me: err no.

mom: 打胜病魔 means i've overcome my fever already (literally, have victory over the fever demon.. wha-? who talks like that?!). and ["CNY greeting"] is.. [lost in translation]..

me: *relieved but still groggy* uh huh. glad u r ok.. take care, ma. i gotta wake up dy..

aiyo MOM!